Plant & Works Engineering June 2022

18 | Plant & Works Engineering www.pwemag.co.uk June 2022 Maintenance Matters Focus on: Condition Monitoring A s unscheduled downtime is far more costly than planned downtime, it’s important that manufacturers have real-time information about their equipment and processes to avoid unexpected faults and failures. One of the key metrics for process efficiency is overall equipment efficiency (OEE). This KPI is related to the availability, performance and quality of the production process. High OEE often means good revenue, low OEE indicates the need for optimization and improvements. Unscheduled downtime will dramatically affect availability and performance — drastically lowering the OEE. Being aware of the real-time status of all equipment and processes is crucial to predicting the potential causes of downtime. Manufacturers who implement edge analytics will be equipped with the necessary data to make informed decisions about equipment and production to optimize processes and maintenance schedules. Leverage the edge Edge computing is computation that is done at or near the devices that are generating the data. Typically, the data collected from machines or devices would be sent straight to a local data centre for storage and historical analysis. But now enterprises want to leverage that data using big data analytics and extensive cloud services. This causes some major concerns regarding security, latency, bandwidth, costs and reliability. These concerns are magnified for facilities with a high number of devices transmitting data at the same time. Instead, edge analytics can form a bridge between the devices and the cloud or data centre, providing a local source of processing and storage. On-premises analytics can collect and filter data, storing or Johan Jonzon* explains how edge analytics provides instantaneous data to prevent unscheduled downtime. Embrace the edge to avoid unscheduled downtime